


you could be anyone

by sapphictomaz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Echo/Niylah (minor), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gaia/Clarke Griffin (minor), Hurt/Comfort, Jordan Green/Hope Diyoza (minor), M/M, Octavia Blake/Levitt (minor), Post-Season/Series Finale, transcendence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:06:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz/pseuds/sapphictomaz
Summary: Murphy transcends, and then he comes back, and really, all he's trying to do is come to terms with the loneliness of his new existence. A certain judge who has taken a liking to the form of Bellamy Blake has others plans.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy, Emori/Raven Reyes
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this work, as really all my works are, is dedicated to the lovely blueparacosm & oogaboogu. they're the best people i know. :)

They’ve been back on Earth for all of five minutes when Clarke destroys everything. “He’s dead,” she says, a simple response as to why there is a Bellamy-sized hole in this otherwise picturesque setting. 

“Bellamy?” Murphy whispers, because no, that can’t be right. There can’t exist a world in which Bellamy ceases to be, yet Murphy is still around to hear the news. There can’t exist a world in which he’s the one to go first. “He was fine when we left-”

“I killed him,” she says, and then she goes on about how she had to, how she had no choice, and it was either him or Madi, but Murphy doesn’t listen to most of it. He hangs back, burying himself in his grief, even as Octavia and then Echo profess their forgiveness. He’s more than earned his place in the group embrace that soon follows but rather than partake in that, he does what he’s best at - he stays back, he stands alone, and he says nothing at all. 

If a single tear falls from his eye as he does so, then that’s nobody’s business but his own. 

* * *

Raven says she’ll fix the helmet. “That’s my girl,” Emori offers her when Murphy elects to stay silent, and he looks between the two of them then back at his sort-of girlfriend, as if to ask,  _ is she, now?  _ Emori doesn’t answer this, but truthfully, she doesn’t have to. 

Still, she hangs back in the hall of the bunker with him as Raven goes on her way to work her mechanical magic. Murphy keeps his head low, not reacting even when Emori puts a hand on his shoulder, a gesture that normally would be comforting, but right now falls somewhat flat. “I miss him, too,” she says. It’s pitiful how easy it is for her to read him, how she doesn’t even have to try to understand the melancholy twisted around the heart on his sleeve and exactly what’s causing it. 

“Yeah,” he says, because what else is there?  _ ‘You don’t, actually, because you didn’t love him, not the way I did’  _ somehow feels like the wrong thing to say, even though it may be true.

She bites her lip, uncomfortable with the silence that falls. It’s clear she’s trying to balance his grief with her own, as she’s always done, even though they both know this leads to nothing but more hurt down the line. “I know that there was more between you and him that I never saw,” she tries, though she’s faltering, “but for what it’s worth, I know that he cared about you.”

_ Just know, I am your friend, and I am looking out for you,  _ Bellamy had told him, only an hour or so before his death at his other friend’s hand. “My friend,” he says, quietly. “Right.”

“Yeah, he was,” Emori continues, and he hates how she’s talking to him as if he were a child, and he hates how she’s really just trying to be kind, and he hates how he’s getting angry at her for being a better person than he’ll ever be. 

Murphy shrugs her off, and then walks down the hallway, out of her sight and out of her grip. She doesn’t try to stop him, though as he carries on, he wishes that she had, because now he’s alone. He’s alone, but every time he turns a corner, a sliver of hope creeps into his chest as he thinks that  _ he  _ is going to be there, somehow, waiting for Murphy with a stupid grin on his face. 

Yet - he turns another corner, and there’s nobody there. There’s nobody there for him to fight and take out all his pent-up anguish on, and there’s nobody there to indulge him in his stupid, impulsive moods, and there’s nobody there to pin him against a wall and demand that he  _ say he’s not worthless  _ before he lets him go. On the Ring, when his head got like this and his grief threatened to tear him in two, as it often did, at least there was the constant of knowing somebody would stick around to pick up the pieces. He was always there, and he always cared (even when he had no reason to), and now he’s dead, and Murphy’s alone. 

It’s like everyone’s moved on, because they have a job to do, and once again the talentless Murphy is left all on his lonesome and this time, nobody is going to convince him otherwise. Everyone is moving on, and just like always, he’s been left behind. 

He’s going to go back to Sanctum, he thinks, as he aimlessly paces, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Maybe Bellamy’s body will still be there, and if it’s not, then he’ll go to whatever planet it is that all these people came from, and he’ll find what’s left of him there. The plan makes sense in his head but he isn’t sure why. He isn’t sure why it is that he wants to see the body, or why he even wants to bother with saying goodbye to it. It’s not as if he’ll say anything back. It’s not as if he’ll know, one way or another. 

The truth is, no matter how much it hurts to think about, is that all that’s left of Bellamy is a rotting corpse with a hole where his heart should be, and Murphy’s alone. 

He huffs, frustrated, yet fighting the urge to kick the wall in case someone sees him. Sanctum’s not an option until Raven fixes the helmet,  _ if _ she fixes the helmet. He doesn’t know anything about practical survival, not for long-term situations like this, so he’s no help to Gaia who went out to hunt. Really, he knows even less about relaxing and living peacefully, so he’s even less useful to those of the group trying to do just that. Emori’s off with Raven and Bellamy is dead and he’s completely, utterly, useless. 

Murphy’s on the ground before he realizes, curling up into himself, his back pressed against the wall. It hasn’t been all that long, not really, since he was last doing this up in the far recesses of space. It’s familiar, and it’s easy to sink into his grief like this as he holds his knees and tries to stop trembling. It’s easy to press his cheek against the cold ground of the bunker and pretend that it’s nice to feel something, no matter how chilling it is. 

_ Say you’re not worthless and I’ll let you go,  _ Bellamy had said to him, a very long time ago, and though the words filter through his mind he never does get around to saying it. 

* * *

Murphy gets up eventually, like he always does, but it turns out not to matter much. The anomaly opens, a bomb goes off, and the ceiling of the bunker crumbles, bringing everything else down with it. The world seems incapable of killing him and so he’s fine, mostly, except Emori’s got a piece of rebar in her stomach and he’s hammering away at a concrete floor to find a buried magical stone, all while his dying girlfriend confesses her love to someone else. 

“I love you, you know,” Emori whispers to Raven. Both of them are smiling, somehow, their eyes gleaming with years of unsaid feelings. Murphy glances at them, once, and then he  _ slams  _ the hammer down on the floor once again. 

Next to him, Jackson works at breaking open the ground as well, almost more furiously than Murphy himself. Sweat beads off his brow but he never falters, not even for a second. Murphy understands why, he thinks - he can’t help Miller, not now, and he can’t do anything more to help Emori even though he’s the only doctor of the group. There’s nothing left to do except beat the paved floor into submission and try to get out of this trap that the bunker has locked them in. 

With a cry, he brings the hammer down once more, and - there it is. He’s hit the stone. Jackson staggers with relief and Raven looks over, letting out a caged breath when she sees it. “Emori, look,” he says, to give her a piece of hope, but she does nothing except close her eyes. 

This time, it’s Murphy that staggers, watching helplessly as Raven shakes her shoulder and Jackson rushes over, doing all he can to keep her heart beating.  _ It’s too much.  _ He blinks and instead of Emori laying on the stretcher it’s Bellamy, his body just as lifeless as hers, blood still seeping from his day old wounds. He may not love her in the way that he thinks he’s supposed to but he does care for her, deeply, and she’s a memory in every part of his life, just like Bellamy is -  _ was.  _ In every single important moment he’s had, there’s Emori, or there’s Bellamy, and now they’re both laying in front of him and somehow he’s outlived the two people that have always managed to keep his heart beating. 

His own blood loss is getting to him. It takes him a second, but he shakes his head and tries to clear it in the same breath, rushing back to further destroy the floor. Raven’s at his side but she’s trembling, not only with exhaustion - she’s afraid. She’s only just confessed her love to someone who is dying, if not dead already, and there’s nothing she can do about it. “She’ll make it,” he whispers, to convince her, but also himself. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, bracing her bad leg and hammering the floor once more. A silent understanding passes between them and as the clock moves forwards, and Jackson keeps Emori’s heart beating, they keep at it. 

Eventually, against all the odds, they make it. Enough symbols reveal themselves that Raven’s able to put in the code for Sanctum, and when the anomaly opens they race through it. They don’t stop, not for a second, but when they emerge on the other side Murphy can’t help but take one quick look around the throne room. There’s no way of telling how much time has passed since they left, but the bodies are gone, and so is the blood that once marred the floor here. 

He knows that it’s been a very long time, but he looks at the spot where he thinks Bellamy would have fallen, and he mourns. 

* * *

Murphy’s the only other Nightblood around, so he becomes the blood donor for Emori while Jackson preps and then performs surgery. Raven’s gone, claiming to have had some kind of idea as to how to save their friends, but more likely she just couldn’t handle the thought of keeping still. Jackson’s work is slow, but careful. Murphy himself tasked with doing nothing but sitting down and not disturbing the needle in his arm, but still, Murphy’s anxious, and he’s exhausted. He does his best to sit back in the chair and his eyes slip shut, but -

_ There’s Bellamy, right behind his eyelids, looking at him with love and sorrow as a bullet breaks his heart in two. “I hope this new thing you believe in is worth it,” Murphy’s saying, but he’s lying. He doesn’t mean it. No, his words are a silent plea, begging Bellamy to understand that once upon a time, he believed in  _ him,  _ and they can go back to that. There’s still a chance to go back to that.  _

_ “It is,” Bellamy says. He falls. Murphy lunges forwards and he grabs him, but there’s nothing except a rotting corpse in his grasp. He screams.  _

His eyes open, and there’s Emori, her own chest open as Jackson does his best to piece back together what’s broken. The heart monitor beeps in an eerie rhythm. She’s alive, somehow, but this does nothing to calm him. 

There’s absolutely nothing he can do but sit there, and though he knows the blood he’s giving is necessary and he  _ is _ helping by staying here, he’s starting to envy Raven. At least she was able to leave the room to keep busy. 

He blinks, only once, but it seems hours go by. Jackson has finished the surgery. The relief on his face is palpable as he takes a shaky breath, removing the needle from Murphy’s arm and freeing him from his own constraints. “She’s alive,” he says, and though he hesitates to say more, of this he is certain. 

“Thank you,” Murphy whispers, standing even though his knees shake. He’d lost blood to begin with in the bunker collapse and he’s just given up a whole lot more, but his job isn’t done, not yet. Still, he remains still for a second, looking at the doctor in front of him, who has just spent hours saving someone’s life while his own boyfriend is trapped on another planet. “Jackson, I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, quickly, and something more passes between them. It seems that only days ago they were sitting in the yard by the farmhouse, and Jackson had slapped a drink out of Murphy’s hand in anger over Abby’s death, but now this, too, is behind them. Murphy nods, grateful, and he turns his eyes towards the door, now with one less thing to worry about. 

Raven’s already standing there when he looks. “Is she okay?” she asks immediately, gesturing at Emori. 

“I think so,” Jackson says. “She needs rest, though, and a lot of it.”

She nods, tension falling from her shoulders. Only now does Murphy see Nikki and the rest of the prisoners, standing behind Raven in the throne room. “Care to explain?” he asks, casting a wary eye over the group that had caused him nothing but problems. 

“They’re going to help us get to our friends,” Raven says, and Nikki nods, confirming this. 

Murphy hesitates, but then he shrugs. He doesn’t have the capacity to care. Even now, as he stands with Emori out of danger, he sees nothing but death when he closes his eyes. They’re not done - not even close. “Time to go, then.”

He takes a step towards the door but he stumbles, just slightly, though it’s enough for Raven to come towards him. Worry is etched into her face as she looks him over. “You’re still hurt from the collapse,” she says, “and - you can’t leave her, not like this.”

Her eyes drift over to where Emori lays and they linger for a second or so longer than they have to. “No,” he says, gently. “You can’t.”

Raven’s gaze snaps back to him and she blinks, stunned. “Murphy, I-”

“It’s fine,” he says, and it is. “I think - we’ve all known this is how it should have been for a very long time.”

She bites her lip, but she can’t argue with him. “Okay,” she says, “but - that doesn’t change the fact that you’re still hurt. You shouldn’t be going back to Earth, not like this.”

No, he shouldn’t be, but her words don’t change his mind. He can’t stay still. If he does, Bellamy’s voice and last moments will haunt him to the end of his days and then he’ll never forgive himself for stepping through that anomaly and leaving him to die. It’s already hard enough to not blame himself for what happened, not when he should have seen what Clarke would do. 

“I have to go help our friends,” he says, “because that’s what he would do.”

Raven doesn’t need any reminder as to who ‘he’ is. “Okay,” she says, and she tries to smile. “Thank you.”

He nods, and then looks over at Jackson, who is trying to stay busy but is obviously filled to the brim with anxiety. “I’ll save them,” he promises, though he has no clue if anyone other than those in this very room are still alive. “I’ll make sure Miller is okay.”

Jackson pauses, and then nods his silent thanks. Raven picks up the helmet used to operate the stones, and she hands it over to him. “Try not to die,” is all she says for luck. He takes it in silence, and then with one last look at Emori, he turns and walks back into the throne room, Nikki at his side and all the prisoners waiting for further instruction. 

It feels wrong, in a way, to be in this position and not have Bellamy at his side, but he can’t dwell on this yet. “No time to waste,” he says, and then he puts on the helmet and does his best to stop thinking about all those he could have saved, but now no longer can. 

* * *

It happens like this - 

Murphy and the rest of the prisoners make it back to Earth. They free those trapped in the rubble and then head off the Bardo. Jordan comes up with a plan to distract the army waiting for them by the anomaly and somehow, Murphy’s teamed up with Echo, the two of them sneaking by the crowd and heading into the complex, their only goal to find Clarke, Octavia, and Madi. They find Octavia and her new fling Levitt easy enough, and then as they rush off with Echo to go back up Indra and keep the army at bay, Murphy keeps going forwards to get to Clarke. 

He’s not sure how  _ he  _ ended up being the one tasked to find their almighty leader, and as he rushes down Bardo’s halls, he considers turning around and leaving her alone. After all, she shot Bellamy. He’s only dead because of her, and if he still believed in taking an eye for an eye, then she’d deserve to feel as alone as Murphy himself does, even just for a little while. 

But - there’s no way he can let another human being feel anything close to the despair in his heart, not when he can do something to stop it. “I’m getting real tired of being the hero,” he mutters, speaking to nobody, himself, and Bellamy’s ghost that sits neatly on his shoulder. 

He doesn’t really know where he’s going, but he takes a turn and ends up in a large white room. Cadogan’s dead body lies in the center of it, bullet holes in his chest and blood seeping into his robes, while Clarke stands slightly off to the side. It’s not hard to figure out what’s happened here but he doesn’t focus on the carnage in front of him. Rather, his eyes land on the bright glowing orb of light hovering in the center of the room that seems to shake with human anger if he stares at it for too long. 

“Really starting to miss when the enemy only had spears,” he mutters, but Clarke doesn’t react to this, as if she hasn’t even heard him. Her eyes are cast to the floor, and she’s trembling, weighed down by something he can’t see. 

“I failed,” she says, after a beat of silence. “It’s over. It’s all over.”

Distantly, Murphy remembers something about how the Bardoans’ ‘last war’ was actually a test that had to be taken. He suspects the light has something to do with this, and while he’s sure he could piece it all together if he tried hard enough, he doesn’t  _ care.  _ He doesn’t care about any of this. Every piece of this conflict seems completely unnecessary and a waste of time to him and all he wants, more than anything, is to go back to Sanctum and go back to his own bed and go take a moment, to himself, where he can get a second to think. He suspects, though, that it will be a long while before he manages to do this. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, stepping towards her. His gaze moves between her distraught face and the light, which seems to be turning darker every second. “Jordan was right, wasn’t he? It was a test?”

She blinks, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. “It was a test,” she repeats in confirmation, “and I failed it, and now the entire human race is going to be wiped out.”

“Wait,  _ what?”  _

“I have to go,” Clarke says, quickly, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, Murphy, for everything, but I have to go to Madi.” With that, she races out of the room, out of sight before he can even blink, and now he’s all alone with a glowing ball of light that looks a lot more ominous than it did a second ago. 

He could leave. The truth of this is clear. There’s nobody here to stop him from walking away and saying goodbye to the human race, leaving them all to their doomed fate. More than that, he’s got no reason to  _ stay,  _ not when there’s nobody here and nobody waiting for him, even if they somehow did manage to live for another day. 

Yet, his feet stay firmly planted on the ground, and he stares into the light that’s now giving off a dark orange glow as it shakes in midair. If Clarke’s failed the test, whatever that means, then he doesn’t know what hope he has of doing anything. He’s not a fool. He’s well aware that he’s not the pinnacle of humanity, and really, he thinks, there are a thousand people better suited to doing this. Jordan’s the one that figured it all out - he should be here to save them all, just like his father did years ago. 

Besides, Murphy thinks, it’s a glowing ball of light. “What right do you have to judge humanity?” he asks, though it doesn’t answer. Still, he steps forwards, even as the light darkens to a harrowing red hue. It doesn’t make any sense to him whatsoever, but he reaches out a hand towards it, anyways. 

Murphy has never claimed to be spiritual, but if there’s one thing he believes in, it’s Bellamy - and Bellamy believed in this so much that he died for it. That has to be worth something. 

His fingers make contact with the light, and then, everything fades away. For a moment, he’s weightless, and he’s nowhere yet everywhere at once, and all his surroundings vanish until he blinks and suddenly, somehow, he’s standing somewhere completely different that shouldn’t be possible. 

The darkness is the first thing that comes into focus. Where seconds previously he’d been surrounded by the white walls of Bardo, he now finds himself standing amidst shadows, his feet on an uneven floor. It takes him a moment to gather his senses but when he does, recognition slams into his chest and he knows, with deep assurity, exactly what he’s seeing, because he’s been here before, a very long time ago. 

It’s a tunnel underneath Polis, back on Earth, that he’s standing in, but it’s not just any tunnel, no - it’s the very same one that six or so years ago, he’d come to Bellamy’s aid in. He’d appeared out of nowhere and saved his life, right in this very spot, and then together they’d gone and defeated A.L.I.E and the world had righted itself. It’s this very spot that, for the first time since they’d known each other, they’d been on an equal playing field and they’d been able to truly trust each other. 

Murphy’s hands tremble and his breath grows shaky as he turns around, desperate for answers. He’s thought about this place and what happened here many times through the years, but it doesn’t explain why he’s seeing it now, or how any of this is possible. “Hello?” he calls out, but his voice echoes off the walls of the tunnel aimlessly. His feet drag against the uneven, rocky ground, and the stale, dry air hits his cheek. 

Just when he’s sure that he’s going to be stuck in this tunnel for the rest of eternity, all alone, he hears it. “Hello, John.”

The familiarity in the voice strikes him and he turns towards its source instantly, eyes wide. For a second, there’s nothing there, and then a flash of light blinds him for a moment and when he blinks - there he is. A figure stands before him, silhouetted both in light and shadow, coming closer by the second.  _ It can’t be,  _ he thinks, but his vision clears and sure enough, against all odds, Bellamy Blake stands before him. 

He looks different than he had when Murphy saw him last. The white robes of Bardo he’d been wearing are gone, replaced by a plain dark shirt. His hair is longer and unruly, and as Murphy stares at him in shock, he realizes that he looks exactly like he had during their time on the Ring. This is the same Bellamy that brought him food every day, even when he did nothing to deserve it. This is the very same Bellamy that pinned him against the wall, determined to make him see his own worth. 

This is - it’s  _ Bellamy.  _

Murphy’s racing forwards before he can stop himself, gathering Bellamy in the tightest embrace he can manage. His hands curl into the fabric of his shirt and he lets out a breath of relief, content with doing nothing but holding him close. It all makes sense, then, as he hugs him. He’s dead. Touching the light must have killed him, and now he’s dead, but this doesn’t matter all that much to him, because Bellamy’s here and they’re together and there’s nothing left to worry about. 

Except - he feels the way Bellamy stiffens upon contact, and he remembers how he called him  _ John,  _ and something doesn’t quite add up. “Bellamy,” he says, and he wants to say more, to ask him where they are, or how they’ve ended up here, but he can’t get the words out. He doesn’t want the illusion to shatter, even if he knows that’s all it is. 

“I’m not him, John,” they say, and though it shouldn’t, this only makes him hold them tighter. 

“I know,” he whispers. There’s a sick sense of irony at play here.  _ I hope this new thing you believe in is worth it,  _ he’d said to Bellamy before he’d left him to die, and he’s pretty sure that he’s now embracing the very person that he believed in - only they look like him. It’s wrong. It’s all so very, horribly wrong, but he holds them for just a second more before he works up the nerve to push them away. 

Bellamy, who he knows is nothing but a copycat, looks at him with no discernable emotion in their eyes. “Why are you here? The test is over.”

“The test,” Murphy repeats. He supposes that makes Not-Bellamy the giver of the test that’s now doomed humanity. A small, buried part of him finds that hilarious. “Clarke said she failed.”

“She did.”

“How is  _ that  _ possible?”

Not-Bellamy doesn’t waver for a second. “She murdered the man you call Cadogan during the test.”

_ Of course she did,  _ he thinks, but he’s still not convinced. “So?” he asks. 

“Violence is never a solution, John.”

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps. 

He watches with disdain as Not-Bellamy raises an eyebrow at him, almost in mockery. “Why not?” they ask. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Murphy pauses, casting his eyes to the shadowy floor. “He didn’t call me that.”

“I’m not him,” they repeat, as if it’s not obvious enough already. 

“I know,” Murphy says, harshly this time. “I know, okay? He’s dead, and you’re from some alien race that’s decided they can judge us based on the actions of one person. I get it.”

Not-Bellamy nods, and he thinks that, just for a second, a flash of regret passes on their face. “The test is done,” they say. “Humanity has proven not to be worthy of transcendence. There is nothing more anyone can do.”

“So we all fail, because - because what? Clarke killed somebody who has killed  _ thousands _ ? Is that it?”

“During the test, I can sense every part of the taker,” they reply. “I feel their memories, their experiences, and their emotions. Clarke did not have to kill him, yet she chose to, anyways, in pursuit of her own vengeance. That is why she failed.”

Murphy bites his lip, trying to quell the rising anger in his chest as he stares at the walking image of a dead man. “So, right now,” he asks, “you can see all my memories? You know what I’m feeling?”

“Yes,” they say. “I can, and I do.”

“Then you know,” he says, “that there is more to us than just vengeance.”

Not-Bellamy pauses. “The test is done,” they repeat, and Murphy’s heart breaks, for more reasons than one. “I  _ am  _ sorry, but there is nothing more to say.”

With that, they turn to leave. Murphy’s eyes follow their exit and he sees, at the end of the tunnel, a set of doors that he swears weren’t there only moments ago. As Not-Bellamy approaches them, they open with a slight rumble, revealing the interior of the Polis elevator, where a very long time ago Murphy had fought by the real Bellamy’s side on their way up to the throne room. Somehow, this whole experience is being tailored to him and the memories he holds close to his heart. 

He suspects that, if he stays put, he’ll simply return back to the room in Bardo and sooner rather than later, humanity will be destroyed.  _ There is nothing more anyone can do,  _ the test giver had said. While they may not be the real Bellamy, there’s some small part of Murphy that still seeks to openly prove Bellamy wrong in every sense, and so he darts forwards and slides into the elevator before the doors close. 

Not-Bellamy looks almost amused as the elevator rattles and begins to lower, heading downwards towards who-knows-where. “They call me the Judge,” they say, their hands behind their back in perfect contentment despite everything. “I have issued many tests to many species over the years, and not once have I rescinded my judgement once it has passed. There is nothing you can say.”

“See, you say that,” Murphy says, trying to keep his balance as the elevator jostles from side to side, “but you’re still talking to me. This isn’t over yet.”

The elevator begins to descend. It feels wrong to be going downwards, when the first time he’d used the contraption it had taken him and Bellamy all the way to the top of the tower. If he’s honest, nothing about this situation feels right at all. He isn’t even sure why he got in the elevator at all - if Clarke couldn’t pass the test, there’s no way he can convince the “Judge” to change their mind. Still, he stays on his feet as the contraption rocks side to side on its descent, if only to pretend he’s spending his last moments with Bellamy at his side. 

“You’re a curious specimen,” the Judge says, shaking their head. “I can sense your pain, your memories - I can see how you have changed.”

_ That’s not a good thing,  _ he thinks, but he doesn’t voice this. “Then you know humanity can change,” he says instead. 

“Humanity will always choose violence.”

“Bellamy didn’t,” Murphy says, and he looks at the Judge with as much intensity as he can muster. “He used to, sure, but he chose peace. He died because he wanted a way to end the violence and the bloodshed. If you’re going to take his form, then you should know that.”

The Judge pauses, reflecting over this piece of information. “You thought highly of him,” they say, “didn’t you?”

Murphy stares at them, unblinking and, he hopes, unwavering. “I did. I still do, and so should you.”

“Should I?”

“Bellamy believed in everything that you’ve set up here. He believed in this test, and in finding a peaceful place for the human race.”

The Judge hums. “A shame that he got killed for that, isn’t it?”

His fists clench at his sides. “Is that how you talk about your true believers? Did his life really mean nothing to you? If that’s true, then you’re no better than us, and you have no place to tell us if we’re worthy or not.”

They shrug, and then the elevator abruptly stops in its descent, the doors sliding open without a sound. Somehow, despite the fact that they’d come from an underground tunnel and only went further down, they’re now in an open field. It’s the one on Bardo, Murphy recognizes, the same one they’d all found themselves in after coming through the anomaly. Indra’s army and the prisoners are lined up on one side, while the Bardoans are on the other, each of them firing shots at each other and locked in a conflict. 

The sounds of battle are so loud that they blend together and become hard to hear. “No,” Murphy whispers, looking back and forth between the two sides, each equally determined to kill the other. Louder, now, he yells, “Stop this!”

“They cannot see you,” the Judge says, “and even if they could, it would not matter. They have made their choice. Humanity will see its end, here on this battlefield, and then it will be no more.”

Murphy looks over at them, desperate for just one more piece of comfort from seeing Bellamy again, but he feels absolutely nothing. The real Bellamy,  _ his  _ Bellamy, wouldn’t be content to simply stand here and watch all their friends die. If it has to be the end, he should be allowed to share it with him, not some carbon copy. “This is cruel,” he says, quietly, before he can stop himself. 

“Violence always is,” they say. 

_ I wasn’t talking about that,  _ he thinks, but he says nothing at all. It turns out that he doesn’t have to say anything, anyways - Octavia comes running out onto the battlefield, and she’s the one who talks down both sides. Slowly, all fighters present begin to lower their weapons and stand down. Her speech is good, and powerful, and while she continues on, he looks over at the Judge once more. 

“She’s getting through to them,” he says, more happy to be able to prove them wrong about something than anything else. 

The Judge looks conflicted, their eyes narrowing and posture tense. “She is,” they say, but it hurts seeing how they look at her. Bellamy should not be looking at his sister with anything but love and admiration.  _ It’s not Bellamy,  _ he reminds himself, but oh, how he so desperately wants it to be. 

“We can change,” he says. “Here’s your proof.”

They nod, and then slowly, a smile creeps onto their face. “Perhaps I was too quick on my judgement,” they say, nodding once. “You all have suffered much. It is past time for a reprieve.”

“What does that mean?” he asks, but the Judge is no longer listening. All around the battlefield, a gentle orange glow starts to envelop each and every person in the field. It’s brighter than the sun itself and he has to shield his eyes, but when he lifts his hand up to cover his eyes, he finds that his fingertips are emitting the same bright hue. 

“You have done well,” the Judge says, pausing as they think something over. “Thank you for reminding me that it is not always as simple as it seems.”

Murphy’s breath hitches as he realizes exactly what this means, and he looks over at the Judge to share his excitement with Bellamy, only to remember that it’s still not the real him. “Thank you,” he says, anyways, even though the thought of an eternity without him crushes him like no pain before ever has. 

They smile, anyways, as if they don’t know what their very presence does to him. “Goodbye, Murphy,” they say, and then the Judge is gone, and so is the battlefield itself. Murphy feels an odd sensation as if he is flying, as if he’s becoming one with the clouds and the sky and the earth itself, as if he’s now a part of the fabric of the universe itself, but he is still alone. 

He is so, so alone. 

* * *

Transcendence feels…

That very sentence is flawed, because it doesn’t feel like anything. There are no emotions to be experienced, not like there were before. Murphy doesn’t miss them, necessarily, but he feels a lot less human as he wanders through worlds. He supposes that’s the point, but it doesn’t feel very utopic to him. 

Sometimes, he’s with other beings, but most of the time, he’s all alone as he traverses through the universe. If he wants to know something, he simply thinks of the question, and all the knowledge of every being here comes rushing into his mind. If he wants to go somewhere, he merely visualizes it, and then he’s standing in whatever spot he’d wanted to see. If he wants to talk to somebody, he can hear their words in his head, and he doesn’t have to speak out loud to reply. 

If he were interested in such things, perhaps he’d find the whole thing more interesting - but he simply doesn’t. 

Only minutes have gone by, but it feels like a millennia has flown by when he sees her. Clarke’s wandering around on Sanctum, Picasso at her side, looking for the signs of any life left behind. “Clarke,” he says, though he knows she can’t see him. 

He understands, as he watches her, that she was not allowed to transcend. That was the Judge’s ruling - the human race could pass the test, but Clarke was not allowed to come with them. She had to pay for her transgressions. He wonders, vaguely, what the Judge would say if he told them that he’d once suffocated an injured boy with a plastic bag on his own path of vengeance. 

This isn’t fair. None of this is fair. Murphy contemplates simply turning away and leaving, but - what would be the point? He’d only travel through more worlds and see more of the same. It’s not all that exciting when he’s exploring alone. 

After all, the one thing that could make eternity bearable for him isn’t here, but oh, how he’s looked. He’s searched and he’s looked and he hasn’t found even a piece of him, not here, so - what’s the point? 

Clarke looks distraught as she aimlessly wanders around Sanctum.  _ She deserves this for killing Bellamy,  _ he thinks, but then he vanishes the thought from his mind. Maybe she does, but - it’s not what he would want. As hard as it is to come to terms with that, Murphy knows that he owes him and his memory at least that.

After all - Bellamy Blake helped save the human race. The least that Murphy can do to repay him for that, and everything else, is save his best friend. 

_ I want to go back,  _ he thinks, knowing that the thought will go to the exact being it needs to. 

_ Are you certain?  _ comes into his mind instantly. There’s no one around him to speak the words, but he hears them clearly. It may be his imagination, or simply his desire to see or hear his voice again, but it sounds like Bellamy.  _ You will not be able to return. If you choose this, transcendence and all it offers will be lost for you.  _

_ I am,  _ he replies, and that’s all it takes. The knowledge of the universe and its ways is snatched away from him in seconds and he has the distinct sensation that he’s falling, crashing back down to the land of the living and breathing. 

_ Good luck, Murphy,  _ he hears, and there’s something about the voice that sounds different. It’s almost human, filled to the brim with an emotion that he can’t quite figure out, but no, that’s impossible,  _ unless  _ \- 

* * *

Murphy’s standing on a beach when his eyes open. 

The first thing he focuses on is the large ocean in front of him, its waves crashing onto the shore in a gentle rhythm. Sand shifts beneath his feet and the air feels fresh and salty when he takes a breath. A gentle breeze dances against his skin and he smiles, looking up at the sky, a bright yet calming sun shining over the sparkling water and into his eyes. Where before, in transcendence, he would only be able to see this sight, now he can experience every single inch of it. 

It’s perfect. It’s quaint, and easy, and he feels more peaceful than he ever has before, and this newfound sense of tranquility is interrupted only by someone crashing into him to give him a hug. 

He hopes it’s  _ him _ for only a second before he realizes. “You’re here!” Emori cries, and he laughs as the impact of her embrace makes him stumble back. 

“I’m here,” he confirms, and when she finally lets him go he sees that he’s not the only one to have made this choice. Raven, Echo, Niylah, Miller, Jackson, Octavia, Levitt, Hope, Jordan, Indra, Gaia - they’re all here. He knows, with some certainty, that he’s the last one to have arrived. 

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Raven calls. A bright red jacket sits on her shoulders. Only now does he realize that he’s wearing new clothes himself, as is everyone else on the beach - a parting gift of transcendence, it seems. “Thought you might have abandoned us.”

“Me? Never,” he calls, and then he walks towards where everyone else is, embracing those that he knows and meeting those that he doesn’t. 

He pauses when Levitt approaches. “I’m surprised you’re here,” Murphy says. “Isn’t transcendence your whole life goal? Wasn’t it what you always wanted?”

“It was,” he replies, “but...things change, you know?”

Murphy laughs, noting the way that Octavia’s looking at him, even from afar, and he nods. He knows all too well. “I wanted to ask you,” he says, but he has to pause to collect himself and quell the emotions that now ache inside his chest. “People who believed in this, but died, do they - do they get to transcend?”

He knows the answer. He’d spent his brief stint in the higher consciousness searching for any piece of him to solve this query, but he has to confirm it, anyways, now that his mortal lifetime is stretched out in front of him. 

“No,” Levitt says, and the last piece of hope in Murphy’s heart shatters. “The dead don’t transcend.”

“I thought so,” he says, quietly, “but - I had to be sure.”

Levitt nods, and though he doesn’t say more, the look in his eye seems to confirm that he knows exactly who he’s talking about. Somehow, Murphy manages to turn away, though the vastness of the sea doesn’t seem all that comforting anymore. 

He trudges through the sand and he pays his dues, forcing himself to be social and express his happiness at seeing everybody as they wait for the person they came back for to find them. Eventually, she does, and as Picasso races into the clearing, followed by Clarke, he hugs her, too, and continues faking his happiness. 

“I wouldn’t have expected to see you,” Clarke tells him, after she’s greeted everybody. “You know, since - since he’s not here.”

Murphy swallows, unsure of when exactly everybody else figured out his feelings and neglected to tell him. “It’s what he would want.”

“That’s true,” she agrees. “For what it’s worth, Murphy, I’m sorry. I’ve never regretted anything more than what I did to him.”

_ I hope so,  _ he wants to say, but he bites his tongue. “I know why you did it, and I think he would, too.”

That’s enough, for the time being, so they carry on. Soon enough, the sun starts to dip below the horizon and everybody pairs off in the groupings they all knew were coming. Emori glances at him once as she goes to Raven’s side, and he gives her a nod to indicate that he knows, and he understands, and she should follow her heart. She smiles, and that’s the end of it. 

He sits on the beach alone for a little while longer, watching the brilliant hues of the sunset fill the sky. The water of the ocean laps against the shore and the breeze chills. He feels just as calm as he did when he’d first arrived here, but now that the reality of what the rest of his life will look like is setting in, this peace is joined by a constant ache. 

After all, he’s not blind. He’s seen the way the people here look at each other, and how they’ve paired off for the night without even having to say anything, and he knows how it’s going to be. Emori is with Raven. Jordan has Hope, Octavia has Levitt, and Echo has Niylah. Indra’s here with her daughter who, he suspects, also has Clarke. 

And Murphy? Murphy’s sitting on a beach alone, watching the sunset, with only a dog to keep him company. How fitting that after everything he went through, after he’s the one that got the Judge to change their mind, that he ends up alone. 

If given the choice, he knows he wouldn’t go back to transcendence. That would only be worse, having a lifetime in front of him without Bellamy at his side. Here, at least, he knows there will be an end to the suffering and the way he feels. Here, he knows that one day, he’ll finally get his reprieve. 

Slowly, he pulls himself to his feet and wanders towards his makeshift shelter, curling up all by himself. The ache in his chest is that of loneliness and he stops trying to make it go away, as he knows that he’ll have to cope with it for the rest of the time he has left to live. After one last look at the beach and the setting sun, he shuts his eyes, bringing on what he knows will be a restless night. 

If he’d looked a little harder, for just a second longer, perhaps he would have seen a figure that looks a lot like Bellamy standing off to the side, watching him, nothing but pure pity in his eyes. 

The sun sets. The figure stays where they are. Murphy’s aware of none of it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is part one of three in this fic!! i hope you all enjoyed the set up. i can't guarantee when the other parts will come out because quite frankly this one took me forever so it might be a while, but it will get finished one day.


	2. Chapter 2

The days carry on. 

For a very long time, they’re all anxious, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Almost none of humanity’s last survivors had ever experienced true moments of peace before, let alone on the very same planet that had almost killed them all many times over. Murphy spends a lot of his mornings looking out at the horizon, waiting for the death wave that he’s sure is inevitably going to come. 

It never does. The sun keeps on rising every morning, waking up his friends and beginning a new day. There is no indication that this cycle is ever going to end. There is no indication that anything is ever going to change, or that their peace will be shattered, or that anyone or anything is coming to kill them all. 

Murphy’s not sure he knows how to cope with that. 

Everyone else, though, they all seem eager and ready to embrace their new roles. Indra, Octavia, Clarke and Gaia focus on hunting in the woods for food and supplies, while Raven uses her genius and the help of Emori and Levitt to build their shelters. Niylah teaches Echo to fish and the two of them roam the coastline. Jackson’s still a doctor in his heart, but now that they’re in a place where nobody needs to be healed, he and Miller help out wherever they can. Hope, who seems to know just a little bit about everything, does the same alongside an eager-to-learn Jordan. 

They’ve all fallen into place. He watches them, sometimes, as he sits on the sand and spends his days with Picasso. Murphy sees the easy smiles that they wear and the way their hearts are filled with love, and contentment, and how the wars they’ve been waging all this time have finally come to an end. All that time, he’d always complained that he’d been fighting battles he never signed up for, but now that they’re done - he doesn’t know how to put his weapons down. He didn’t know how to on the Ring, and he doesn’t know now, and if he thinks about it, he’s never going to know. 

He does help out, of course, because he wants to do all he can for his friends. He does. Murphy’s nothing if not adaptable and everyone is, for the most part, willing to show him what they know. He picks up the basics of fishing pretty easily, and he’s not horrible at organizing supplies and helping to build the shelters with Raven’s direction. It’s just - he knows he’s not necessarily wanted or needed. Wherever he goes, whoever he spends time with, he’s interrupting someone who would rather spend time with someone else. And that’s  _ fine,  _ it is, he can cope with that.

So he sits in the sand, alone with a dog, and he goes to sleep later than everyone else and he wakes up before them, too, because if he’s doing that then at least his loneliness is somewhat justified. 

Sometimes, when even sitting becomes too much to handle, he’ll wander down the coastline until he’s out of sight and he’ll simply explore. There’s so much terrain that he never got the chance to see during his first stint on this planet. He always makes sure to bring back some firewood when he goes on these journeys, just to prove that he’s doing something worthwhile, but if anything else interesting catches his eye he collects this, too. It doesn’t take long until his shelter is full of stones and plants and flowers he’s found fascinating. 

It’s fine. Life here is fine. He’s doing just fine, and if he gets up in the middle of the night to scream at the ocean, that’s nobody’s business but his own. 

* * *

Moonlight shines over the ocean and it shines in the darkness, a constant reminder that though it is shrouded in shadows, its beauty still remains. The edges of the water lap around Murphy’s boots as he stands at the shore, staring off into the horizon. He’s wandered a very long way down the coastline, far, far away from all of his friends who are sleeping peacefully in their respective shelters. He hasn’t slept, though - not yet. He doesn’t think he’s going to. 

Six months have gone by. He’s surviving, but it - it should not be this hard. 

He can almost feel the chill of the water through his boots and he takes a step forward, finding solace in the ocean’s icy grip. The water sloshes around his feet and he keeps going. It feels good, somehow, to leave solid ground. Out here, he can pretend that he’s one with the ocean and the planet at large, and he can pretend that he’s part of something bigger than himself, and he can pretend that this is all going to be over, one way or another. 

Before he knows it, he’s waist-deep in the water, his own salty tears dripping down and joining it. He longs to be weightless. “Take me back,” he whispers, not entirely sure what he’s asking until he vaguely remembers what it felt like, when he was more than this confining mortal body. 

He remembers what it felt like, to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and he’s starting to think he made the wrong choice. At least transcendence offered an unlimited supply of memories to view and if he couldn’t have what he wanted, he could pretend that it was there. Murphy could pretend that everything was fine but here, now, he’s all too painfully aware that he’s nothing more than a man about to give himself a case of hypothermia. 

The water’s cold. It seeps through his clothes and hangs onto his skin. Murphy screams. 

He’s sure that he’s far enough away from the beach where his friends have made their home that nobody will hear him. This implicit freedom, combined with the sudden want for  _ more,  _ is enough. A cry escapes his lips and then another, longer this time, and he longs to keep screaming until there’s nothing left inside of him to shed. 

“Take me back!” he yells, but his feet stay planted. “Take me  _ back _ !” 

A slight wind rushes by his face. The vast ocean continues to shine. Murphy’s no more than a piece in a sublime landscape yet he feels none of it as he hangs his head, wondering if it would simply be easier to just keep walking forwards until he becomes a part of the ocean for all eternity. Eventually his body might wash back onto shore, or - maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he’d be saving himself and everyone else a whole lot of trouble.  _ It’s a shame,  _ they might say, and then they could bury him or burn him and be done with the whole thing. 

He’s seen the way they look at him. He’s seen the pity in their eyes. He knows how guilty Emori feels, having left him to pursue her own love and leaving him without. Even Raven, by extension, looks at him with pity.

Murphy takes a stumbling step forward. He’s almost certain that he won’t take another, that he’s going to turn back around anyways and pretend that he’s fine, when a voice calls out and shatters the silence. 

“Murphy, wait,” he hears, and when he turns around, Bellamy Blake is standing in the water with him. 

Except - it’s not him. It’s the Judge, back once again to haunt him with their immortal ghost. “Leave me alone,” Murphy snaps, trying to ignore how their kind brown eyes shine with empathy. 

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you know?” he says, gazing back out at the shadowy horizon. He doesn’t know why he’s entertaining this conversation at all. The loneliness must really be getting to him. 

The Judge wades toward him until they’re standing at his side, hands clasped in front of them, a perfect replica of how Bellamy looked up on the Ring. “I don’t,” they say. 

Murphy scoffs. “So much for the all-knowing universal consciousness, then, huh?”

“You are no longer a part of transcendence,” they reply, “so, no, I don’t know what you are thinking, or why you are out here. I can only watch.”

He speaks before he thinks of the consequences. “Take me back.”

“I can’t.”

“Please.”

“You were told of what would happen before you chose to return to the mortal plane. I’m sorry, Murphy.”

They sound so much like Bellamy when they apologize that Murphy’s eyes shut involuntarily as he tries to block out the memory. “Please,” he repeats, “at least, stop torturing me. Don’t look like him. Don’t take his form.”

He waits a moment, and then he looks up, heart falling and anger filling his chest as the image of Bellamy stays at his side. They’re quiet and contemplative, taking far too long to reply to his request. “Is this not who you wish to see?” they finally ask, very quietly, and oh, how he wants to lie. 

“You don’t know what I want,” he finally says. Murphy wants to have the strength to deny the query, to insist that he doesn’t need Bellamy by his side, or that he doesn’t miss the man at all, but he’s unable to form the words. The truth is that, even if he knows that it’s not really him, the thought of standing out in the ocean with him at his side brings him just a piece of solace. 

“I did, once,” they say. They pause, then, uncomfortable, and Murphy thinks it’s very odd that an all-knowing being such as the Judge can appear so human. Their mannerisms, down to the very way that they run a hand through Bellamy’s unruly hair, seems so much like the man they’re appearing as that if he didn’t know any better, Murphy would think it was really him. “Bellamy was your greatest love, was he not?”

The anger dissipates almost immediately and the water grows that much colder. “I don’t know,” he finally says. 

For a second, the Judge looks genuinely surprised and concerned, but as they resume their neutral stance he chalks this up to a trick of the light. “I see,” they say. “Is there someone else you’d rather be here with you?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” he asks. “Even if there was, it wouldn’t really be them. It would just be you.”

“Just me,” they repeat, humming softly. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Besides,” Murphy continues, “how are you supposed to know that kind of thing? I - did I love Bellamy? I guess I did. But I loved Emori, too, I think.”

They smile, softly. “When you think of Bellamy,” they ask, their voice low and quiet, “does it feel different than the others?”

Murphy bites his lip. “Yes.”

“Then, that’s how you know.”

“That simple, huh?”

“It can be.”

Murphy sighs. “Well, like I said, it doesn’t really matter. Bellamy’s dead, and he’s not coming back.”

The Judge nods, slowly, sighing under their breath. They take a long time to think over what they’re going to say before they finally speak. “I know you feel alone,” they say, “but you bring many skills and value to others, just on your own. You don’t have to feel like this. You’re not worthless, Murphy.”

Murphy’s breath hitches as he hears the words and he wonders if, somehow, they know exactly what that phrase means to him. For just a fleeting second, he thinks that the real Bellamy is standing next to him, because he doesn’t understand how they could know about that moment, but - that’s too good to be true. He’s not a fool. 

If he thinks about it, he knows that they’re right. Once he gets over how he’s feeling (which, he hopes, has to happen eventually), he can easily have a full and happy life with everyone else on this beach. Sure, he’ll never have someone he loves in that way, not like they all do, but he has his friends and that can be enough. It has to be enough. 

For now, though, the water is cold and the air bites at his skin and he can pretend that it’s just him and Bellamy, standing together, ready to face the unknown. “Yeah, I know,” he lies. 

The Judge says nothing to this, though he almost wishes they would. Sighing, Murphy focuses on the scene in front of him and he stands there, waist-deep in the water, until the sun slowly begins to crawl up into the sky and bathe the world in its glow. The anger and the sadness dissipate from his skin, eventually, and all he feels is a large, aching, emptiness. 

At some point or another, the Judge vanishes. He doesn’t notice it when they leave, and though he knows it shouldn’t, the loss of their presence hurts all the same. Still, he manages to turn around and head back to shore, finding his way back to his shelter and curling up in it so that his waterlogged boots are the only sign that he was ever gone. 

* * *

He’s throwing wood on the fire pit when it happens. 

“Hey, thanks, Murphy,” Miller says, coming over to light the actual fire. 

“Sure,” he replies, having just returned from one of his pointless adventures down the coastline. He’d had no intention of doing this  _ for  _ Miller, but there isn’t much point in explaining that to him. 

Jackson comes over, as well, giving his boyfriend a quick kiss. “The hunting party just came back,” he tells them, gesturing to the other side of the beach where Clarke and Gaia are huddled together. They’ve brought back some kind of animal with them, and while he’s grateful of course, it’s a relatively small catch for the amount of time they were gone for. 

“I’m sure they were doing more than just hunting,” Murphy says, tossing the final piece of wood he brought on the firepit. When no one laughs or replies, he looks up, only to find that both Miller and Jackson are looking at something behind him, eyes wide in shock. 

Murphy’s brow furrows, but he turns around to see what’s caused such a reaction. He blinks in surprise when he sees what they’re looking at, and he hates the way his heart skips a beat before he can rationalize what this means. Miller cries out to everyone else, and soon they’re all aware of what’s going on, each person on the beach reacting with various amounts of surprise. Most of them, Murphy realizes, don’t understand the truth, though he knows why this is. 

Bellamy Blake is standing at the edge of the beach. 

He sighs, knowing that this is the Judge. “What do you want?” he calls out as they approach. Almost instantly, the confused eyes of all his friends snap to him. 

“I came back,” they say, walking even closer. Behind him, Murphy can hear Clarke’s breath tremble and Octavia’s footsteps as she rushes across the sand. 

“Why?”

“Because,” they say, “you wanted me to.”

He shakes his head, about to say more, but then Octavia’s at his side. “Murphy,” she says, her voice low, “what is this?”

“It’s the Judge,” Murphy replies, raising his voice so everyone can hear him. Instantly, Clarke calms herself, the only other person there who had some experience with them. “They’re the one who carried out the test for transcendence, and the one that allowed us to come back.”

They falter, as if they’re going to speak up, but then they bite their lip. “That’s me,” they finally say, though Murphy notes the way they awkwardly shift from side to side. 

“So, it’s not - it’s not him?” Octavia whispers. 

“It’s not him,” he replies, but he wishes he was wrong. He wishes he could lie to her, and tell her that it was, if not for her sake, for his own. 

“I don’t understand,” Raven calls out, from somewhere behind him. “Why are they here?”

The Judge hesitates yet again. “I told you,” they reply after a second. “I came back.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Murphy says, dryly.

“What do you need from us?” Miller asks, when it’s clear that Murphy’s not going to and the Judge isn’t going to voluntarily say. 

“I came back,” they repeat, “for good.”

Murphy blinks. He thinks he understands what this means, but - it can’t be true. It can’t be possible. “For good?” he repeats. 

“Transcendence is a choice,” they say, “and I chose to come back. I - I chose to keep this form and spend a mortal, human life with all of you.”

Clarke’s coming towards them, now, though she’s hesitant as she looks at the face of her best friend that she murdered months ago. “Why would you do that?” she asks. “And why would you choose to look like him?”

“Because,” the Judge says, looking right at Murphy as they answer, “I thought you wanted me to.”

He’s quiet, and it takes him a while to realize that everyone’s looking at him for an answer. Murphy looks at the Judge for a moment, taking in how they look exactly like Bellamy, how they sound exactly like him, and how they’ve chosen to give up transcendence, their own creation, just because Murphy said he was lonely - which is exactly something Bellamy would do. 

“Murphy?” they say, taking a small step towards him, holding out their hand, silently begging him to take it. 

He shakes his head. “I didn’t want you to,” he says, and then he walks away without another word. 

* * *

An hour or two goes by before the Judge finds him. 

They sit down next to him in the sand, and Murphy lets them without a fight even though, like everything else, he didn’t ask them to do that. “I’m sorry,” they say, and Murphy sighs. 

“I didn’t ask you to do this,” he says. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I thought you would be happier,” they reply. “If you had him with you.”

“You’re not him.”

“I could be. I could try.”

Murphy glances over at them. They look genuine when they say that, as if they so desperately want to do their best to try and become the man that’s long since been dead. It shouldn’t be possible, but they really do seem like they ache for Murphy’s approval, and though he only sees Bellamy’s kindness in their eyes, he knows it’s not true. “It’s not the same,” he finally says, turning back to look out at the ocean. 

They seem to deflate right next to him, and he wonders what he did to get an immortal all-knowing being to fall in love with him. “I just wanted to help,” they say. It’s as if they’re talking about something other than this moment, but he’s not sure what that could be. 

“Look,” he says, “I’m sorry you gave up transcendence to, I don’t know, make me feel better, but unless you can bring someone back from the dead it wasn’t worth it.”

They’re quiet for a moment. “I wish I could.”

“Yeah, well, so do I,” Murphy sighs, and then he stands. He can’t bear to spend another second alone with them on that beach, not when he’s all too painfully aware of what they’ve done for him and how it’s still not enough to ease his aching heart. “Welcome to being human.”

They smile, softly. “It really is quite lonely,” they say. 

They’re both in the same situation, Murphy thinks, but he doesn’t say this out loud. “Yeah, it is,” he agrees, and then he walks away, leaving the Judge all alone on the beach. 

* * *

“I just can’t believe they came back for you,” Raven says to him, several days later. They’re working together to fashion a roof over her and Emori’s shelter, the old one having broken in a rainstorm the night before. He’s thrown himself into helping with as many tasks as he can, only so that he can avoid having to look at or spend time with the newcomer. 

“Neither can I,” he admits. 

Emori shakes her head in wonder next to him. “It doesn’t make sense,” she says. “They look like Bellamy, but they know that  _ you  _ know they’re not really him. So why would they bother to do this?”

He knows she doesn’t mean it like that, but it sounds harsh.  _ Why would they bother to come back for you?  _ is what she’s really asking. “I didn’t ask them to,” he repeats, for the thousandth time since they came back. 

“That’s not what they’re telling everyone,” Raven replies, sighing. “If we ask, all they say is that they thought it’s what you wanted.”

“I didn’t. I don’t want this.”

“Surely something happened, though, that-”

“I  _ didn’t _ ,” he snaps, and Raven falls silent. Emori glares at him, and he sighs. “Alright, I’m sorry. But it’s true. I don’t know why they came back, and to be honest, I wish that they hadn’t.”

Raven’s quiet for a second, but she nods. “It must be hard,” she says, “to look and see him everywhere, only, to know that it’s not really him.”

“Yeah,” he says, softly, because she’s right. It is hard. The thought of spending his lifetime with a carbon copy of the love of his life, but never once being able to see him again, is more than haunting. 

“For what it’s worth,” Emori says, “they’re trying to be helpful. They’re doing their best to help us, and they’re not bad to talk to.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. 

She shrugs. “We can’t exactly cast them out,” she says, “so they’re going to be here as long as we are. There’s no harm in just getting to know them.”

_ There is, actually,  _ but he’s too tired to argue again. “Yeah, maybe,” he says, and then he falls silent, and thankfully Raven and Emori take the hint. They continue to work, silently, until the task is finally done and they step back. 

“I’m not sure how to predict the weather patterns,” Raven says, “but I’m pretty sure last night’s rain won’t be the last of it. We’re right by the ocean, so we should think about moving inland for this season, just in case it gets so bad there’s flooding. Maybe we could set up some temporary shelters somewhere in the forest.”

Emori nods, her eyes shining as she turns the problem over in her mind. “So, we’ll need a couple people to scout for possible locations, then?”

“Yeah,” Raven agrees. “That would be helpful.”

“Hey, Judge!” Emori calls out. They’re walking over almost instantly when they hear her call. During their brief time here, they’d insisted it was fine if they called them  _ Bellamy,  _ but none of them had done that - yet. 

“What’s going on?” they say, looking over at Murphy before Emori, even though she was the one to attract their attention. Murphy’s careful not to meet their gaze. 

“We need a couple people to scout the forest for some temporary shelter locations,” she explains. 

“Yeah, I can do that,” they agree, quickly. 

“Great,” Emori says. “Murphy, you’ll go with them, won’t you?”

His eyes widen as he realizes what she’s done. Sure, he could say no, but that would look bad on him in the group. He’s about to decline anyways when he finally sees the eagerness in the Judge’s eyes, and he sighs, unable to turn them down when it feels as though it’s Bellamy who wants him to go. “Fine,” he sighs. “Keep up, okay?”

Without another word, he walks up the beach and towards the trees, the Judge following close behind. 

* * *

They walk in silence, Murphy just a ways ahead of them, until they reach the clearing. This is his choice, of course - he doesn’t want to say more than he has to. The thought of speaking to the Judge as if they were a friend, as if they were anything close to the role that Bellamy himself played in his life, haunts him more than he’d like to let on. 

The Judge, of course, trails behind him wordlessly, as if they’re under the impression that if they do what Murphy wants for a long enough period he’ll magically change his mind about them and they’ll live happily ever after. He doesn’t understand why they did this for him. Surely, he’s not the first person to ever lose someone. There’s no reason why they should take special pity on him.

And, honestly, it’s insulting that they did. He didn’t ask them to do this. He didn’t want a constant reminder of what he can’t have living here with him, constantly trying to please him. It’s insulting that they think he’s too weak to live without a clone of the man he loved here with him and he wonders how long he’s appeared that weak to the outside world. 

“This should do,” Murphy says, mostly to himself, but also to signify the end of their journey. They’ve reached a wide clearing in the woods, where he’s sure that Raven can rig up some temporary shelter without much trouble. It’s big enough that they all can stay here when the ocean is in danger of flooding, and not too far away from the beach that it will be hard to go back and forth. 

“Looks great,” the Judge says, stepping up to reach Murphy’s side. 

“Time to go,” he declares, but before he can even think to turn around, the Judge is reaching out and grabbing his arm, stopping him from his retreat. 

“Wait,” they say, “I just - I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Murphy sighs, gently removing his arm from their grasp. He so desperately wants to escape from this conversation, but he’s also known that it’s been a long time coming. “Yeah, you’ve been apologizing to me a lot lately, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry-”

“Look, I honestly don’t care,” he says, cutting them off before they can say just enough that Murphy will feel sorry for them and, in turn, stop hating them so much. “You thought I wanted something that I didn’t want. You made a mistake. That’s all.”

They swallow, nervously, looking down at the ground. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure that comes with the territory when you’re an all-knowing immortal being.”

“I’m not,” they snap, and for the first time since they’d chosen to become human and join the group on the beach, real anger shines in their eyes. They’ve rarely displayed any emotion except for genuine contentment and something close to love, and Murphy’s so surprised by this change that he shrinks back, slightly, becoming even shorter next to the Judge’s shoulder. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, because he’s not sure what else he’s meant to say. 

The Judge sighs, running a hand through their hair (just like Bellamy always did), and then they shake their head slowly. “No, I - I’m sorry. I just meant that I’m not an immortal being and I  _ have  _ made a lot of mistakes, that I deeply, deeply regret.”

Murphy’s quiet, for a second, taking this in. “Me too,” he says, softly. “It’s okay, you know. To make mistakes.”

They laugh, and for just a harrowing moment, he can believe that it’s really Bellamy standing next to him all over again, and the dull anger that burns in his chest relights itself. “I’m trying to learn that,” they reply, “but it doesn’t come easy to me. I’ve always felt like I needed to be perfect, in every way. A lot of people relied on me, and I let a lot of them down, even though I tried to do what was right for them.”

Murphy nods. He figures that being a pinnacle of transcendence would come with a fair amount of challenges. “I’m sure you did your best,” he says, and he’s not sure why he’s bothering to comfort them, until he thinks about it and he realizes that, deep down, there’s a part of him that genuinely does care. 

“Thank you,” they say, quietly, and then they clear their throat to break the tension. “Now, um - we should go tell Raven we found somewhere, right?”

“Right,” he replies, a soft smile on his face as he gestures for them to leave, letting the Judge go first this time. Maybe it’s true that Murphy’s never going to  _ like  _ them, but - he can at least find it in his heart to tolerate their existence. After all this time, he thinks he’s at least that kind. 

* * *

As it turns out, this is fortunate, because Murphy ends up spending a lot of time with them. After seeing the clearing for the shelters, Raven deems it usable, and then somehow Murphy and the Judge become her own personal labour. Since she can’t continuously make the walk out to the clearing and back, she sends them there with supplies and the instructions on how they should construct the shelters. 

“Please send someone else,” Murphy begs her, just once, when the Judge isn’t there to hear him. “I will literally do anything for you if you send someone else.”

“Everyone else is busy,” she says, “and I want Emori here with me, so - sorry, Murphy. You’re going to have to learn to work with them. They’re really not all that bad.” Somehow, it seems that the Judge has won over everyone else except for him. 

“I hate you,” he says, not meaning a word of it, since he still takes the supplies she gives him and walks back to the clearing. The Judge is already there, hard at work, though they smile when they see him. 

The two of them manage to work in silence, for a while, until Murphy finishes up one of his tasks and rises to his feet. “Since they’re temporary, Raven said it would be easier to just build a few,” he says. “Less than what we have on the beach.”

They nod. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Besides,” Murphy continues, “that way there’ll be less chances for people to sneak off and hook up, like they’ve been doing lately.” He’s referencing Clarke and Gaia, mostly, but he’s talking about all of the couples around them. The joke slides off his tongue before he can stop it. The Judge is not someone he wants to have a laugh with, but, he supposes this can also be a move towards tolerating them. 

The Judge laughs. “Probably a good thing,” they say, “especially since there aren’t any calla lilies around here to use as reparations, huh?”

They look up to meet Murphy’s eye, expecting to continue the humour, but he’s not laughing. Instead, he only blinks, shock entering his chest. 

_ Calla lilies are nice. Maybe don’t get flowers for a one night stand.  _ He can hear himself say those very words as if it were yesterday. It’s a special moment in his heart that it makes him think of, when back on the Ring, he and Bellamy  _ did  _ have a one night stand and the very next morning, he’d awoke to an artificial calla lily flower on his bed as an apology. They’d laughed about it, and no one else had ever known. 

The being, the  _ person  _ in front of him is as good as human. They’re not part of the universal consciousness, not anymore, meaning they have no access to the unlimited well of knowledge and memories that it offers. Murphy knows that he’s never told a single soul on this beach about that moment and what a calla lily means to him, and there’s no way that the person in front of him, if they were telling the truth, would be able to access that memory of him. 

There’s only one other person in the whole, entire universe who would be able to make that joke, but - it’s not possible. “There’s no way,” he mutters, shaking his head. 

“Murphy?” the Judge says, standing as well and dropping the supplies they’d been working with onto the ground. 

He thinks about all the little moments he’d noticed. The Judge laughed like him. They spoke like him, they carried themselves like him, and they even had his nervous habits, down to the tiniest movements. He’d always brushed this off as coincidence, but  _ what if -  _

Murphy looks him in the eye. He can’t quell the wave of hope that rushes over him as he tentatively asks, “Bellamy?”

The person in front of him stops and stills, and for a moment it looks as if they’re going to deny it, but then a small smile appears on their face. 

“Hi, Murphy,” Bellamy Blake says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long! life kinda happened. anyways. part 3 will come...eventually....but it will come i promise. thank you for reading and all the support as always!


	3. Chapter 3

“Hi, Murphy,” Bellamy Blake says. 

Off in the distance, the waves lap at the sandy shore of the beach. A bright green leaf falls from an overhanging branch and catches the wind, softly fluttering down to the ground. It lands right by his boot and, despite what he’s just heard, the only thought that goes through Murphy’s head is how he’d like to hear what sound the leaf makes when he steps on it. 

Bellamy blinks. “Murphy?”

“Shut up.”

He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. To his credit, Bellamy falls completely silent, waiting for Murphy to speak - except, when he doesn’t, he starts up again. “Listen, you have to understand-”

“No,” Murphy says, quickly, before he’s even had a chance to process any of this. “No, I don’t - you’re him? The  _ real  _ him?”

Bellamy sighs. “Yeah. Mostly, anyway.”

“Mostly?”

“I did transcend,” he says, “just - before everybody else did. It happened on Etherea, where I was stuck for a few months. There were these bright lights, and I touched one, and right in that moment - my mind became part of the higher consciousness. I know I had a physical body, after that, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t completely  _ me _ , I don’t think, and I don’t remember anything that happened from that point until I - well, when I died.”

Murphy shakes his head, letting out a dry chuckle under his breath. Nothing that Bellamy just said makes much sense to him, but the more he thinks about it, the less he cares. “This whole time?” he says, the shaking of his head getting shorter and shorter as he finally looks up and manages to meet the other man in his gaze. 

“The first time the Judge visited you, in the water, that was them, but - I saw it. I was there, too, and everything after that was me. I chose to come back.”

“But you didn’t say anything. You just - you let me  _ assume  _ it was them, and not you?”

A small sparkle of sadness shines through Bellamy’s eyes. “I was wrong for that,” he says, quietly, “but I thought - it would be better. I’ve done so many bad things, Murphy. This way - you wouldn’t be burdened by them.”

“ _ I  _ wouldn’t be burdened?” Murphy repeats, incredulous. He steps back, a dull  _ crunch  _ echoing through the air. He doesn’t notice. “So - what? You just get to decide what I want now? Is that it?”

“Murphy-”

“No,” he repeats, but he’s angrier, this time, the fire he’s worked for so long to extinguish relighting in his chest. “You  _ lied  _ to me, Bellamy. You lied to everyone. I mean, hell, your sister is out there - you didn’t think she’d want to know that your brother is alive? You didn’t think that Clarke would like to know she didn’t actually kill you, that she doesn’t have to live with that guilt for the rest of her life? And me, well, that’s - that’s not up to you.”

Bellamy nods, roughly, a single tear threatening to fall from his eye. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It was selfish, but I really - I thought it would be easier. It can be, you know?”

“It can’t,” Murphy says. “Not now. And that’s on  _ you.”  _

“Murphy,  _ please _ -”

“You’re a liar. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t want to,” he insists. “I didn’t want to, but I thought - I thought I  _ had  _ to. For you. For  _ us.  _ Don’t you see? We could be anyone, here, you know?  _ You _ could be anyone, if I gave you that freedom, and that’s all I wanted.”

He sighs, the anger fading into nothing but a deep, deep disappointment. “That’s not what I wanted,” he says, quietly. “I just wanted you.”

“You have me.”

“No, I don’t,” he says. “Not like this.”

Bellamy bites his lip, his eyes full of pain, a silent plea for Murphy to understand and accept his decision. “Then - how? I’ll do whatever it takes to make this up for you. I gave up eternity for  _ you _ , Murphy, so let me fix this.”

His mouth starts to feel dry as he thinks about all that time he spent in transcendence, searching for any sign of Bellamy to the very ends of the earth. “I looked for you.” He’s saying it before he even thinks about it, the words begging to get off his chest. “I spent so long, years, maybe, looking for you in transcendence. And I never saw even a piece of you. So, what - you were hiding from me?”

“Yes,” Bellamy says, and Murphy blinks, not having expected the confirmation. “I was. I knew that you must have hated me, and with good reason, too. Like I said - we don’t have to worry about any of that stuff, though, not now. We can forget it all, can’t we?”

“It’s not my fault that you wanted to ignore the things you’ve done wrong, rather than admit them,” Murphy says. “Don’t put that on me.”

“That’s not-”

“I don’t care,” he interrupts yet again. “I don’t care about whatever justifications you have for this. I’m going to go back to the beach and forget this ever happened and - after that, I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s done.”

“Wait!” Bellamy says, stepping forwards and reaching out to him with a half-gesture, so that his hand closes around empty air rather than Murphy’s arm, though the sentiment is there. “Please don’t tell them the truth about me. Please.”

Murphy takes another step back, though his limbs feel heavy and time feels like it’s passing him by at much too quickly a pace. Nothing about this moment is processing in his mind. The thought of returning to the beach and pretending everything is fine makes him feel sick to his stomach, but so does the thought of betraying Bellamy’s trust, even after all of this. He absolutely hates how he’s caught in this loop where, even now, Bellamy continues to weigh heavy on his mind. 

He doesn’t answer the plea, and instead, he turns around and walks back through the forest and towards the beach, letting the tears fall only when he’s completely out of sight. 

* * *

It’s almost eerie how things return to normal. 

Murphy doesn’t answer Raven when she asks what he’s doing back, or where the Judge is - instead, he retreats to his own shelter and sits in silence with Picasso at his side. Eventually Bellamy comes back, too, and engages in conversation with the others while only glancing Murphy’s way every so often. 

He doesn’t say a word. Bellamy doesn’t try to approach him or ask him what he’s going to do with the information. The sun begins to set, as it always does, and as the others slowly find their way to the beach after a long day they remain completely unaware of the truth. Octavia sets the fire pit alight, and the flames crackle into the growing darkness. 

Murphy wants nothing more than to throw himself in Bellamy’s arms and kiss him and forget any of this, but he knows he can’t. Not like this. He’s grown up, at some point over the years, and he knows now that he can’t settle for Bellamy lying to him about every aspect of his identity. He won’t do that. It would be wrong for him to do that, but oh, how he wants to. 

At some point during the evening, Clarke finds him and approaches, not sitting next to him but standing above him, so that her golden hair is shining against the last rays of the sun. “Hey,” she says, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Bellamy - I mean, the Judge, or - you know who I mean. Are they acting weird?”

Murphy scoffs, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. The truth is on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it, and instead he replies, “They’re always acting weird.”

“Well, yeah, but - more so than usual?”

“How would I know?”

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know,” she says, “I just kind of thought that you would be the one who would know these things.”

“Well, I don’t, alright?”

She pauses. “Are you sure?” she asks. “There’s nothing - different about them?”

Murphy meets her gaze and locks into it for a couple beats. “I don’t know,” he repeats. 

Clarke nods, still bothered, but acknowledging that she won’t get any answers out of him. “I could have sworn…,” she mutters, under her breath, but then she turns away before he can hear the rest of her sentence. He sighs, looking up at the sky, pushing the conversation and everything else out of his mind as he closes his eyes. 

For a moment, it’s almost peaceful. He can almost close his eyes and forget about what he knows, and forget that he’s finally got all that he’s ever wanted but now, because of how it came about he can’t accept it. He can forget the deep sense of betrayal that’s buried in his chest and he can forget that it’s probably never ever going to go away and he can forget - 

“We’re getting married!” Jackson shouts, and the peace is shattered. 

Murphy stands up and moves closer to where everyone is gathering. “I just thought it was time,” Miller’s saying, explaining how he’s the one who proposed, and that now that they were safe for the rest of eternity, he didn’t want to wait. 

“I’m happy for you, man,” he says, when it’s his turn to speak. As he hugs Miller and then even Jackson, setting aside their past differences to celebrate the moment, he doesn’t miss how Bellamy stares at him from across the beach, his silhouette illuminated by the setting sun and the flames of the fire. 

* * *

The wedding is quaint, but nice. They find flowers and gifts to give on Sanctum and come back to the beach, where Miller and Jackson both walk down the aisle and meet in the middle. The two of them exchange vows and kiss, and then it’s done, but the moment is sweet and Murphy catches most of the couples looking at each other many times throughout the whole affair. It’s pretty obvious that there will be many more weddings to come over the next short period of time. 

Afterwards, as Miller and Jackson, now newlyweds, are showered with attention and congratulations, Murphy wanders down the beach. He’s already done his part. He helped get the wedding organized, because that’s what friends do, or so he thinks, and he gave them both his support. After that, well - he’s not exactly keen on participating in the group dance that’s going on that’s only going to turn into a couples affair. 

Really, he thinks, he should have known that Bellamy would follow him. “Murphy, wait!” he calls out, his footsteps racing through the sand as he approaches. 

Murphy doesn’t slow down. Instead, he waits until Bellamy finally outpaces him, racing in front of him and then holding out a hand so that it touches his shoulder, stopping his movement, holding them both face to face. “What?” he asks, harshly. “What do you want?”

“I just want to talk,” he says, but Murphy shakes his head in response and tries to side step him to keep moving forwards down the beach. Bellamy’s anticipating this, and he grabs his arm to stop him. 

The grip isn’t harsh, and it wouldn’t be difficult to shake him off, but Murphy doesn’t try to escape. The simple knowledge that it’s Bellamy’s hand on his skin is enough to make him want to stay, and he’s angry with himself for that. “Fine,” he says. “Talk, then.”

Bellamy blinks, clearly not expecting this. “Well, I - I didn’t really have anything prepared. I just wanted you to stop ignoring me.”

He exhales, long and slow. “I don’t know what you want from me, Bellamy,” he says. “You clearly didn’t care about me enough to tell me the truth, that it was you, and that you were really back. So what am I supposed to think?”

“You’re supposed to think that I’m in love with you.”

Murphy blinks, and then his eyes narrow and he finally pushes Bellamy’s hand off his arm, though he doesn’t walk away, not yet. “Fuck you,” he snaps. 

“It’s the truth.”

“No, you - you  _ died,  _ Bellamy. Do you get that?”

Bellamy sighs, pained and desperate, and then he shakes his head with a newfound determination. “Murphy, I am in love with you,” he repeats, “and I’m scared. I’m scared that my past mistakes will get in the way, and I’m scared you hate me because of who I was, and I’m scared that we won’t get our chance. I was wrong to lie to you but I was so, so afraid. I  _ am  _ afraid. Don’t  _ you  _ get  _ that?”  _

Murphy pauses. He’s used to Bellamy challenging him, but not like this, and not about this. “What was the game plan?” he asks. “Just - let me believe you were someone else for the rest of our lives, and hope that maybe one day I’d love you back? Hope that I would fall in love with who I  _ thought  _ was a stranger wearing a dead man’s face?”

“Well, okay, when you put it like that-”

“You’re an  _ idiot!”  _ he yells, and then the anger overtakes him and he shoves Bellamy back towards the water. 

He stumbles, but he doesn’t fall, and he doesn’t try to fight back. “I’m in love with you,” he repeats as the edges of the water sloshes around his ankles. 

“I hate you so much,” Murphy says, and then he’s stepping forwards once again and his fingers find contact with Bellamy’s chest and he shoves him, yet again, and then again, so that they’re knee deep in the water and he hasn’t even noticed yet. 

“I know you love me, too,” Bellamy continues, as if he’s not in the middle of an ocean. “I know that scares you, but it doesn’t have to. We can do this, together. I know we can.”

The entire wedding party has been alerted to the noise and they’re staring at them, now, some of them coming closer to try and break up what probably looks like a fight. “I hate you,” Murphy repeats, but his voice cracks. He reaches up with the intent to shove him further back, but when his fingers touch Bellamy’s shirt he stops, his arms shaking. 

He’s angry. He’s furious with him, but as he stands there below the sunshine and the cold water lapping around his waist, the irrefutable fact that his fingers are touching  _ Bellamy’s  _ chest enters his mind and refuses to leave. Bellamy’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s real, and he’s standing right in front of him and he’s professing his love and maybe, just maybe, he’s earned it this time. He’s made too many mistakes to count, and if he can be forgiven for those, then  _ maybe  _ \- 

“Murphy!” Clarke calls from the beach. All their friends are standing at the edge of the water, trying to figure out what’s going on, but he doesn’t acknowledge them. He can’t tear himself away from this very moment at hand. 

Murphy looks at Bellamy for just a second, and then he moves forwards through the water and kisses him before he can say anything otherwise. Bellamy kisses him back and he’s sure he hears several of his friends cry out and whisper to each other in confusion. He doesn’t pay them any mind. The kiss is long and there’s anger and passion in it as the water moves against their waists and the sun shines down on them from far, far above. 

After far too long but also not long enough, they break away. “So?” Bellamy asks, quietly. “Does that mean you love me, too?”

“No,” Murphy lies, “I hate you so much.” But - there’s so much that goes unsaid.  _ I hate you for lying. I hate you for dying. I hate you for leaving me all alone and I hate you for letting me think that was going to be it forever. I hate you so, so much for making me care.  _

He’s sure he doesn’t say any of this out loud, but Bellamy begins to grin as if he hears exactly that. “I know,” he whispers. “That’s okay. You can hate me, if that makes it easier for you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then don’t,” he says. “Don’t hate me. Forget all of it. Do you remember what I said, back when you figured out the truth?”

“Not the time for a calla lily.”

“No,” Bellamy agrees, “but I said that you could be anyone. So can I.”

“That easy, huh?”

“That easy.”

Murphy pauses, and then he nods. “Alright, fine,” he says. “I guess I can do an eternity with you, Bellamy Blake.”

“Dramatic,” Bellamy replies, dryly, to which Murphy huffs indignantly, and then he proceeds to reach down and splash Bellamy with cold ocean water. This only results in him being splashed back and the chill of the water isn’t the only thing sending shivers down his spine. 

Eventually, they’ll return to shore, and Bellamy will tell them all the truth. Murphy will half-heartedly apologize for upstaging Miller on his wedding day and then they’ll all go back to camp, and nobody will be alone, and eternity won’t look so scary after all. 

For now, though - it’s just him and Bellamy, alone together underneath the sun, and Murphy thinks that maybe, just maybe, that’s all he’s ever needed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello...sorry this was a little short. i had a few extra scenes in here, but to be honest, i ended up cutting them because they didn't really contribute to the main ending of the story. this was just meant as a short and sweet post finale fix it anyways, so i hope it could be just that for you all. i do have something much bigger and expansive cooking, but i think i'm gonna take a bit of a break in writing (not too long, just a bit) because i have been churning out fics at an insane rate and i can feel myself losing my drive a bit, if that makes sense. but i will return!
> 
> anyways. i hope you did enjoy this lil thing! much love! <3


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